I Learned About Compassion Fatigue For The First Time When I Was A 911 Operator For Two And A Half Years.

Heres a reminder for you that being dissociated isn't limited to the common misconception where you are frozen in place, incapable of doing anything or even thinking, or experiencing a significant time gap,, those things.

And while its hard to spot the milder signs when you're dissociating, don't worry i got you covered by bringing awareness, im showing what those signs could look like:

Dazing/blanking out several times

Hands looking weird (depersonalization)

Surroundings also looking weird (derealization)

Feeling detached emotionally, physically, or both

Light-headedness

Less reactive in responding

Forget things more often

Unable to focus or keep concentration straight

When you have multiple of those signs at once, then chances are you are dissociating (extra note that it can also co-occur with derealization/depersonalization). While it can be caused by various factors, i would like to add that it may or may not get worse as time passes and no one wants that thing to snowball until it got too bad (remember, preventing now is better than dealing later) so having a few tips would help:

Grounding (sensory): listening to music, feeling different textures, paying attention to things in your surroundings, trying different fragrant or scents, have some snacks to occupy your senses

Grounding (physically): feel your chest as you breathe, get your body moving to redirect focus, splash some cold water, hold something you can squeeze (such as a stress ball)

Practice being mindful. As it can help you re-anchor back to reality faster, regulate better, building more resilience, increasing awareness of oneself's state

Sometimes we go do our day without giving a thought that were detached from reality, usually by going autopilot and scrolling through social medias without being aware (well, atleast for me) and forget lots of things while being dysregulated at the end. So by being aware of the mild signs and incorporating grounding skills im sure memory gaps and those funny aftermath stuffs won't be a problem anymore, have a good day peeps.

- j

Satanic Panic, The False Memory Foundation’s Shaky Origins, and Why You Should Believe RAMCOA Survivors

(TW: mentions of RAMCOA, False Memory Foundation, child torture & death, cults, trafficking)

Pretty disappointed to see a fairly popular and well known blog on tumblr is encouraging the idea that RAMCOA doesn’t exist. Just came across this post and was pretty bummed to see the comments too.

For those that agree with them (most of my followers won’t but who knows who will stumble across this), please know that RAMCOA has been going on for much longer than the Satanic Panic. The Satanic Panic was fabricated in an effort to discredit RAMCOA survivors. It was supported by the False Memory Foundation, which was created by a man (and his wife) trying to prove his daughter’s repressed memories of trauma involving him did not really happen. [Explained further in the third article further down in this post]

For the record, false memory/planting false memories has been disproven, it’s not possible to fully plant false memories in patients. Some memories can be altered to an extent because memories can be disjointed and influence from others can cause memories to shift slightly, which is why it’s not encouraged for trauma patients to share exact detailed memories with each other. For example, if two trauma patients were abused by their father and had a similar situation happen and patient A spoke about their experience in detail, if both fathers wore glasses and patient A describes their father to have black rimmed glasses, patient B’s memory might shift to believe that their father also had black rimmed glasses, even though his glasses were gold rimmed. However, it’s not possible to fully plant memories that do not exist in a patient’s memory. The “base memory” so to speak has to be there in order for any alterations to occur, and those alterations that are possible are often rather minuscule, such as glasses or whether or not their abuser had facial hair or not, or the color of the person’s eyes. Not an entire scene of RA. [Again, explained well by the third article below.]

Repressed memory has been proven to exist. (Though it’s more accurately called dissociated memories by clinicians) It can even exist in people who have traumas that happen in adulthood. Pieces of a traumatic event may go missing in a patient’s working memory, and they may not retrieve it until they are ready to process the memory and all the emotions and information that comes with it. However, it still exists stored in the brain, just in a different area than working memory. It’s why triggers to the traumatic event (that the patient may not even realize are triggers until they occur) can cause flashbacks and memory resurfacing during said flashbacks.

Some sources explaining the False Memory Foundation and the harm they’ve caused: [a good overview of a woman who was major in the development of the idea of repressed memory being a myth, by a researcher of child psychiatry], [while this is a psychology today article, I think this explains well how misused the idea of FMS - false memory syndrome - is.] [A comprehensive article explaining the roots of the FMF and how the studies used to “prove” false memory are terrible and easily debunked, with several assertions from professionals in the field.] I want to add that while the FMF has dissolved and rightfully so, the British False Memory Society is still alive and well, as well as the Satanic Temple’s Grey Faction, and both groups still cite False Memory Syndrome as being real and claim that RAMCOA survivors have false memories of their abuse.

However, before Satanic Panic happened, people were starting to actually believe in the existence of RAMCOA and the concept of DID was brought into the mainstream. A survivor on tiktok has a very good video on this situation. And that scared people, especially the abusers themselves who didn’t want to get caught. That’s when the False Memory Foundation stepped in on the heels of Satanic Panic and literally rewrote the textbooks therapists learned from, and basically taught everyone that repressed memory doesn’t exist. Any therapists that spoke about their patients’ experiences with RAMCOA were sued. Therapists stopped wanting to treat RAMCOA patients for fear of being sued and/or losing their license or being told they planted these memories in their patients’ heads and possibly losing their licenses. It led to generations of old therapists not treating RAMCOA patients and generations of new therapists learning it doesn’t exist.

But it does exist. To outright deny that child torture cannot exist is absurd. 1-2% of reported child abuse falls under the definition of child torture. [source, TW: photos of children with serious injuries from torture included on page 7 of this document] For the record, my abuse was never and has never been reported, and most survivors—RAMCOA and non-RAMCOA, whose trauma falls under the definition of torture—never reported or plan to report.

Even if you find the mind control aspect to be far-fetched, ritual abuse most certainly does exist. I’ve seen videos on the surface web on fucking tiktok of all places of child torture and ritual abuse. Organized abuse such as sex trafficking and labor trafficking does exist. Two out of those three things in the acronym are well documented to exist. And for the record, ritual abuse and cult abuse even in adults can cause extreme mind and identity alteration, upwards to the point of nearly being mind control. Look up OSDD-2 in the DSM-V. Look up just about any cult survivors testimonies and hear how they talk about how they nearly became a different person within their cult, how the cult uses torture and mind altering drugs to get their initiates to commit terrible acts of violence to each other. Now imagine if that same stuff were happening to a child whose mind is significantly easier to mold and change. Even if the child RAMCOA survivor does not develop DID, it can cause extreme conditioned responses in which the child (or now grown adult or teen) will still do the responses even now because as a child they were threatened with torture or death if they didn’t do it.

Mind control is essentially an extreme form of conditioning, and with the plethoras of research on DID and how it functions, it’s not even a difficult concept to grasp that a cult member might learn how to split new alters in a child via torture and then manipulate those alters to do what they want individually. Anyone who knows fuck all about DID knows that alters can be triggered out via positive and negative triggers. All mind control programming is, is creating a specific trigger for a specific alter and then when that child is exposed to that trigger, that alter comes out and does the task it was taught to do—usually via torture, manipulation, and threats of harm to the child or those the child loves. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp, and with how long TBMC (torture based mind control) programmers have had to perfect their work, it’s no surprise that they’ve learned how to make alters do extremely complex tasks or hold onto specific functions, always at the ready for their specific trigger.

RAMCOA research doesn’t exist in mainstream spaces because it’s nearly impossible to be taken seriously because of people who claim it doesn’t exist when it’s not even a complex topic to understand. They just don’t want to accept that it exists. The concept is terrifying, harrowing, and at some times almost absurd—and that combination makes it easier for people to put their blinders up and decide it doesn’t exist. [Edited to add: On top of this, what little research is done on it is steeped in conspiracy theories that often have roots in antisemitism. While I’ve asserted that Miller’s deprogramming books are good reads for RAMCOA survivors, she does often sound conspiratorial, and quotes Svali, a known antisemite. While I don’t think RAMCOA is exclusively related to the Illuminati stuff she often talks about, Miller’s work cannot be completely discounted because of her beliefs of where the abuse originated. Where it originates matters much less than the fact that it happens. However, not from dark, underground, secret societies—but from normal places like churches, children’s own homes (yes, RAMCOA can be done by a single parent to a single child, it just may look different than say, a trafficking ring), trafficking rings, militaristic groups, political cults, etc. I wanted to put the above put there because I know someone is going to come at me and try to say the researchers who talk about it were conspiracy theorists. Yeah, they were. Maybe they were the only ones willing to talk openly about it because of the fact they’re conspiracy theorists? I don’t know. However, I think it should also be noted that just because the researchers sucked doesn’t mean the information taken from them isn’t useful when you weed out the conspiracy stuff. For example, a LOT of modern understanding of medicine was taken from Nazi and Japanese experiments during WWII. Arguably some of the worst doctors on earth. Do we discount everything we learned because they were horrible, evil, people? No. While those who studied RAMCOA went about it in shit ways, that doesn’t discount the information learned completely. Likewise, much of modern psych understanding came from roots that included incredibly unethical experiments that would never be allowed today. Do we throw out all of that info too? No, we don’t. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t hold these people accountable, I’m saying we cannot throw out all discussion of RAMCOA because the doctors who talked about it were shitty people.]

I wish I could decide it doesn’t exist. I have permanent scarring that proves what happened did happen. I have doctor’s visits that prove I am disabled because of the traumas I went through. I have a DID specialist who didn’t even know programming to our extent even existed before our parts started telling her what they went through and she heard it from our own mouth. She had to learn how to deprogram us on the fly because she’d never done so before. So fuck off with your “oh, RAMCOA patients only have RAMCOA because they’ve been influenced by their therapist to believe they do” bullshit.

I relive my traumas in flashbacks and nightmares daily. There have been periods in my healing process where I couldn’t leave the house without someone with me for months. I couldn’t hold a job for nearly a year. I didn’t know any of this happened to me until I was in my 20s. I thought my memory was just bad and the only parts of my childhood I remembered were little blips of good things, usually involving my parent that was not involved with the cult or memories with friends at school or when I was hanging out with my sports teammates. Living with this stuff is hell. You think I want to live with this stuff? If I could permanently erase it all from my memory forever I would. But I can’t. I don’t have that luxury.

It happened. And I’m not the only child it happened to, both in the area of my country I live in and in areas all over my country and the world. This is not an isolated phenomenon. It is more common than anyone tends to realize (though still rarer than most DID cases, thank fuck). I was lucky to survive. I survived because they wanted me to. I saw a lot of children, teens, and adults who were not as “lucky” as I was. If you won’t respect survivors and their stories, at least respect the ones who didn’t survive. They didn’t deserve their final moments to be so full of pain. All of the children in these groups deserved to be loved and cared for and treated with softness and compassion. So do adult survivors like me and many others.

If I could end on one thing, it would be to urge the doubters to have some fucking compassion and empathy for people who have been through things they cannot even begin to understand. My past feels like a nightmare I will never be able to escape. I cannot erase it. I can only try to heal from it. So heal I will do, and in the process I will continue to speak the truth of my experience as safely as I can.

You want proof it’s real? Survivors are your proof.

WE are the proof.

[Edit: changed some wording for clarification + added a section after rereading a couple hours later]

[Edit 2: I realized I said my abuse has never been reported, I meant my RAMCOA related abuse. Want to make that clear. I reported sexual abuse done by my church to CPS and nothing came of it. CPS actually wrongfully claimed that since they had no reports existing of that church harming kids they wouldn’t pursue it since it happened so long ago, when a cursory google search of said location shows they’ve been reported multiple times and all reports were dropped. Why, I’m not sure.]

I would not suggest the deprogrammed wiki, lots of miss information there, but there is some true stuff there too. Just wanted to add that! 

RAMCOA* Resources

Trigger warning: the content on these websites contain discussions of rape, abuse, and trauma-based mind control. PLEASE be careful with yourself, especially if you’re a survivor.

Survive’s page on ritual abuse

General information, does not include information about mind control. Aimed at survivors and allies.

BRISSC’s page on ritual abuse

General information, does not include information about mind control. Aimed at survivors and allies.

RAMCOA Resources Carrd

A very thorough resource on RA and mind control. Contains information on different types of programmed alters and their terms, a general definition of ritual abuse and TBMC, common trigger dates for survivors, and what you can do to help. Aimed at allies. The information here can possibly be triggering if you are a survivor or suspect you are a survivor.

endritualabuse.org

A vast site on ritual abuse and mind control, created by a psychologist who has worked with survivors of RA. Contains information, words from survivors to survivors, and symptom lists of survivors, mostly intended for therapists and professionals. As a survivor, I have found many helpful things for recovery on this site, but please be careful on which articles you read. The information part of this site is very thorough and can possibly be triggering if you are a survivor or suspect you are a survivor.

Deprogram Wiki

This is a site that is a gold mine for information on detecting if someone is a victim of TBMC and programming, the different types of programmed alters, and, specifically for therapists or professionals, how to deprogram someone who has been a victim of RAMCOA. HEAVY TRIGGER WARNING — this site is NOT intended for survivors at all and can be extremely triggering.

*RAMCOA - an acronym that stands for Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, and Organized Abuse.

thanks! i was wondering what helps you safely deal with/ resist callbacks in general? i hope i worded that ok, if it‘s too triggering to talk about please don‘t.

It's not triggering at all! Don't worry one bit. We took a while because we were vacationing (and getting used to my boyfriend snoring like a chainsaw directly into my eardrum)!

Callback is tricky for us because it's one of the few well-executed programs we have. Our situation was poorly planned, so most of the attempted conditioning ended up messy. Teenage ad-hoc groups aren't exactly known for their consistency.

Something to keep in mind is that programming does not come from nowhere. It exaggerates and warps common trauma responses. It is a common experience in abuse survivors to have the urge to return, and that means there are lots of resources on this topic! Yes, a survivor of extreme conditioning presents differently than a ""normal"" DV/abuse survivor, but at its core, it's the same mechanisms.

For us, in particular, though:

Identify material barriers. This is things like not having enough money, being in a location where you can't really leave freely (work, school, etc.), not having access to transit that will get you to a location, etc. Locking our credit card is example of introducing a material barrier ahead of time.

Identify nonmaterial barriers. This is social consequences like people missing you & having responsibilities that need fulfilling in the time frame, or less physical things like not having a method of contact (like lacking a phone number) or address.

Let someone be your accountabili-buddy. This doesn't have to be telling someone about programming, but it could be as simple as "can you please call me at x time" or "I will call you when my flight lands". This goes into nonmaterial barriers, but here, instead of passive "what if people miss me" or something, you are instead actively introducing someone who will be checking on you.

Good ol' grounding. Whatever method works for you(/y'all), it will help. Programming is a return to a time period, a way of thinking, that is incongruent to the current moment. Reminding yourself that it you are not in that place anymore (through whatever means you like) will help. Our favorite is music, especially newly-discovered stuff.

Mild reminders to how bad that trauma period was helps us. Fighting a program with flashbacks isn't ideal, so we try to keep the reminders abstract. "It was very scary back then and things are better now. We should not go back." That sorta thing. Our partner helps a lot with this, as he is not going to be specific (he does not know the details of course) but still reassuring and supportive.

See if switching will help. We come armed with many sensory-based triggers (a plush or two, music playlists, jewelry, access to food & drink) so we try to drag someone else's sorry ass into the mix, especially a non-conditioned part. Blake, a physical protector and top layer resident, is our default "walking in potentially dangerous area" headmate and he ended up escorting us through the airport a lot!

We did all of these while we travelled last week, and we ended up perfectly fine. We were on the phone with our partner nearly the entire time, kept ourselves fed & watered, and honestly? Enjoyed it. We like the odd liminality of airports and despite an hour delay for one of our flights, we actually had a great time travelling.

We wish you luck!

Something I've noticed is how some CDD systems (and general trauma survivors) sometimes treat "extreme" trauma like a fictional concept when trying to valid themselves. I understand where "you don't need to go through RAMCOA abuse/a war/a dictatorship/etc to be a system and have cptsd" comes from and I fully agree with it. Some shitty ableist singlets can be very annoying with how they only accept trauma when it's "extreme" trauma. But I think the way some people talk about it sometimes just makes it sound off. I don't know it's just the way some people phrase it like "Not everyone traumatised is living in a war zone 🙄" makes me really uncomfortable. Like it's not the faults of people who have gone through "extreme" trauma that some people are ableist and uneducated

Also, people who go through those do exist? Like idk most people I see talk about it like it's some far-off vague fictional out-there concept and not like, a thing that real people experience and go through? Like RAMCOA abuse is real and valid (I'm not a survivor myself so I won't talk about it a lot but I felt the need to bring it up because the way some people talk about it is just weird), people who have lived through wars exist? and their trauma is valid, people who have been trafficked exist and their trauma is valid, people who have been tortured exist and their trauma is valid, people who have survived genocides exist and their trauma is valid, and people who have been in cults exist and their trauma is valid. In general, people with "extreme" trauma exist and their trauma is real

Survivors of "extreme" abuse/trauma shouldn't be made to feel like their trauma is too taboo to mention. Or feel like they can't talk about it out of fear of "invalidating other systems". All trauma is valid (including "non extreme" trauma). I think validating traumatic things that aren't usually viewed as trauma by the average person is good but please try not to bring down anyone else in the process

As a RAMCOA survivor I don't feel safe in the CDD community or the plural community. Both sides villainize us while also doing performative allyship and pretending to care about survivors. We're evil if we come forward and save our childhood friends and loved ones. We're evil if we share information to help survivors know why they're experiencing what they're experiencing. Our therapist is supposed to magically figure out what exact symptoms were experiencing without us ever voicing anything because we don't have the language to explain it. We're always told to shut up and be quiet and then non-survivors get to walk all over us and speak for us without ever considering that maybe it's not their place to EVER get involved in any form of discourse around what we can do or not. Quite literally this is a case of oppressors speaking for those they oppress. Broader society also wants us to be silent because we're seen as too depressing. Too much. It's seen as normal and okay to encourage survivors to let their programming fully take them other as long as it's not the ones that hurt others or dares to make people see scars on you. Then that's a problem but people like us should just disappear and stay silent like our programmers wanted. That's the message that is given so often when people talk about us. The other message is we would be better off dead than dare speak.

Endos / endogenics and why they aren't valid :

We've made posts on this before but we decided it might be good to make one big post to link to for when / if anyone asks again. We tried to cover everything we could in this post but we'll likely be making other posts similar to this later on.

So what are endos? Endos or endogenics are people who claim to have DID/OSDD without trauma or claim to have alters / be a system without having DID/OSDD.

Why is this bad? This is misinformation because as far as science knows DID/OSDD is a trauma based disorder (specifically caused by trauma in early childhood, which is speculated to be 1-9 / 1-12 years old) and your brain would not split / create alters without reason. You cannot have alters without having a disorder, this is common sense as it's not normal to have alters. To add onto this endos also take over our communities and steal our terms. (We'll make a post with further information on that in the future).

There is also a carrd that explains why endos are bad and debunks a few myths if anyone is interested in it! If not continue reading

Why can't you have DID/OSDD or alters without trauma? As far as science knows DID/OSDD is a trauma disorder and in order to have alters in the first place you require dissociation, which is also a trauma response. Here are tons of medically reviewed sources that say this:

“ They suggest that DID is caused by experiencing severe trauma over a long time in childhood. By experiencing trauma in childhood, you take on different identities and behaviours to protect yourself. As you grow up these behaviours become more fully formed until it looks like you have different identities ” — rethink.org

“ Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder, is a complex psychological condition caused by many things. These include severe trauma during early childhood (usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, or emotional abuse). It's also known as split personality disorder. ” — webMD

“ DID is usually associated with adverse experiences in someone’s past and traumatic memories. ” & “ Dissociation — a major part of DID — is a defense mechanism the body uses to reduce your awareness during overwhelming trauma ” — pysch central

“ DID is associated with long-term exposure to trauma, often chronic traumatic experiences during early childhood. ” & “ Dissociation—or disconnection from one’s sense of self or environment—can be a response to trauma. It can happen during a single-incident, traumatic event (e.g., an assault, a natural disaster, or a motor vehicle accident), or during ongoing trauma (e.g., wartime; chronic childhood abuse). ” — mcleanhospital.org

“ Dissociative disorders often develop as a way to deal with a catastrophic event or with long-term stress, abuse or trauma. This is particularly true if such events take place early in childhood. At this time of life, there are limitations to your ability to fully understand what’s happening. In addition, your coping mechanisms aren’t fully developed and getting support and resources depends on the presence of caring and knowledgeable adults. ” — my.clevelandclinic.org

“ There are many possible causes of dissociative disorders, including previous traumatic experience. ” & “ Switching off from reality is a normal defence mechanism that helps the person cope during a traumatic time. ” — nhs.uk

“ Dissociative identity disorder is the result of a natural way of coping with childhood trauma. Our page on the causes of dissociative disorders has more information. ” & “ Dissociation is a natural response to trauma while it's happening. But some of us may still experience dissociation long after the traumatic event has finished. Past experiences of dissociation during traumatic events may mean that you haven't processed these experiences fully. ” — mind.org (two links since they're two different pages)

“ Dissociative disorders usually start as a way to cope with shocking, distressing or painful events. The disorders most often form in children who go through long-term physical, sexual or emotional abuse. Less often, the disorders form in children who've lived in a home where they went through frightening times or they never knew what to expect. The stress of war or natural disasters also can bring on dissociative disorders. When you go through an event that's too much to handle emotionally, you may feel like you're stepping outside of yourself and seeing the event as if it's happening to another person. Mentally escaping in this way may help you get through a shocking, distressing or painful time. ” — mayoclinic.org

Most of these sources are pretty recent too, with the most recent one being made in September 2023 (webMD)

What about religious beliefs / tuplamacy? First people are not required to believe or participate in your religious beliefs (and religious beliefs are not exempt from criticism) and second tuplamacy is a closed Buddhist practice that has nothing to do with being a system and should not be compared to being a system nor should it be included / involved in system communities. Note that the DSM-V also says that in order to have DID; "The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice." <- this does not mean it's possible to have alters due to a religious thing, if anything it says they cannot be counted as alters / as a system.

To add on, no you cannot pray to be a system or transition into being a system. If you were to pray and one day magically become a system you are either in denial or you've convinced yourself you're something you're not. Believing you can be a system without trauma or that you can become a system by praying is like believing you can get autism from vaccines or drinking too much dairy milk, that's just not how it works.

What about mixed origin systems? Mixed origin systems are not a thing. DID/OSDD forms purely from trauma, you can't form from a mix of trauma and not trauma, that's not how it works. If you identify as mixed origin you are likely in denial and really need to come to terms with the fact that you are either traumatized or you're not a system at all.

What about other kinds of origins? Other origins like "willowgenic" and all that bullshit? Yeah no, same thing as endos, not possible. Look above for all the proof you need, DID/OSDD is only caused by trauma. Traumagenic is the only valid origin.

But I gave myself DID! / But I created my own alters! No you didn't. That isn't possible, you cannot turn yourself into a DID/OSDD system and creating alters is a coping mechanism, not something you do for fun, sources on this;

“ DID Isn't Something You Can Give Yourself on Purpose. Having DID was not a conscious decision those of us with the disorder made when we were children. Dissociative identity disorder is not a selective disorder, meaning you cannot decide that you want to develop this brilliant coping mechanism and then you have it. ” — healthyplace

“ In any case, additional alters are usually the result of extreme stress. The mind does not like to be fractured even when an individual already has DID or OSDD-1. Many individuals cannot split unless a split is strictly necessary for their protection, functioning, or ability to remain hidden as a system. That said, there are exceptions. Some individuals may become so used to using splitting as a coping mechanism that they may split easily in response to seemingly minor stressors. ” — didresearch.org

Isn't being a system like the same as being trans or being LGBTQ? No, many endos compared the two but they are completely different. Being LGBTQ is an identity, it's something you are born as. Being a system is a debilitating disorder caused by severe trauma, it is counted as a disability which is;

“ 'A person has a disability if: They have a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.' ” — gmc.org

The reason DID would be counted as a disability is that;

“ Having a dissociative disorder can affect your ability to keep a full-time job, especially one with work stresses, which can worsen your symptoms. ” — disabilitysecrets

And the DSM-V criteria literally says;

“ The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning ” — traumadissociation

But the DSM-V says that trauma isn't required! No, the DSM-V actually says CSA isn't required, there are other forms of trauma that don't involve CSA or child abuse. To act as if it saying that the trauma isn't always CSA or child abuse means that it doesn't require trauma at all is extremely invalidating to those who are traumatized in ways that don't involve child abuse or CSA.

But this source claims endos exist / DID doesn't require trauma! Most of those sources are extremely old and / or made by endos (or pro endos) themselves. (We'll make a more in-depth post on this topic some other time, but for now this is all we have to say on it)

But we don't know everything about the human brain! You're right, we don't. The brain is mysterious, but we do know enough to know that it doesn't do these kinds of things for no reason. We know the brain reacts to trauma and we know what the difference between a normal brain and a disordered brain is. Just because we don't know everything doesn't give people an excuse to jump to conclusions and spread misinformation. It is better to stick to what science currently knows which is the theory of structural dissociation, which is the current theory about how DID/OSDD forms, and so far no one has been able to disprove it. And before someone says it, no it is not only a theory, it is a scientific theory which is;

“ A theory is a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts. The theory of gravitation, for instance, explains why apples fall from trees and astronauts float in space. Similarly, the theory of evolution explains why so many plants and animals—some very similar and some very different—exist on Earth now and in the past, as revealed by the fossil record. ” — amnh.org

And to add on;

“ Scientists develop theories to explain the natural world and to advance scientific knowledge. A theory is the highest level of explanation in science. Some features of scientific theories are that they: have been thoroughly tested over an extended period, provide accurate explanations and, predictions for a wide range of phenomena, are widely accepted by the scientific community, demonstrate strong experimental and observational support ” — study.com

Types of Timeloss

This is based completely on personal anecdote. Hope this is helpful for someone.

Soft time loss: There are a lot of different forms of soft time loss. Zoning out and feeling numb/dissociated is one of the most clear signs that you are being influenced by an alter or that one is co-present. If you can only remember the gist of what is happening in your life, you are losing a lot of time actually.

It can be helpful to remind yourself of what you’re doing day by day and month by month. As you close your day, keep a journal and remind yourself of what happened. At the end of the month, try to remember what happened, then re-read your daily journal. At first, the separation between alters may make this feel weird. There is often a lot of dissonance for multiples when they try to look at and remember the activities of other alters - a reflexive feeling of shame, fear, disgust. If you push through it, it’s so worth it because it begins the process of integrating past those barriers. I found that unless I reminded myself of what was happening, within a month things would fall away from me.

Some people experience a form of time loss where they will remember things better if the alter responsible for those events is co-present, and will find they have an inconsistent memory where sometimes they remember another alter’s activities, and other times they do not. It’s not uncommon for someone to initially remember what happened but for this knowledge to then become compartmentalized to the identities responsible for it over the course of a few days or weeks, leaving things that seemed clear initially in the dark.

Hard time loss: A sudden jump in time. This may be severe enough to be noticed by the main active parts of the personality. This is often caused by active trauma. A lot of people, especially multiples who are no longer being abused and traumatized, don’t have a lot of episodes of this. A certain degree of integration happens when safety is attained that makes it less likely. Instead, people who are safe will often experience co-consciousness or when they switch, they retain awareness of their actions.

Sleep-induced time loss: Alternate identities can switch in during sleep, although not everyone has this form of switching. I’ve noticed people with this type of switching generally have a comorbid sleep disorder like narcolepsy. This is usually caused by alters trying to hide their activities from another alter. If someone is abused in an organized ring as a child, they may have been trained (by doing things like associating different alters to different phases of sleep) to automatically switch during certain states of mind. People who have sleep induced time loss can sometimes end up trapped in their internal world as a lucid dream. This may not be noticed for a very long time by the person because they think their dreams are normal dreams - but actually, while they are dreaming, they may be active in another identity, making this not a true dream but rather is indicative of being stuck in the internal world while another identity is fronting. People who learn lucid dreaming can learn to cross the barrier between this type of extreme switching by forcing themselves to wake up while another identity is active (I did this once and woke up in the middle of a programming session.) It can be difficult to tell if you are dreaming or stuck in the internal world and it may be a while before you can catch yourself. I once caught one of my alters trying to go on an online date when I accidentally woke myself up during what I thought was a lucid dream in my internal world.

Co-consciousness amnesia: Some people have the problem where they will lose time when they are present because another alter who is actively observing/fronting will do something for a short amount of time, like say a few things to another person or take a few steps towards making breakfast, and the other identity will not notice they’ve done these things or will feel as though they have zoned out and will have a vague awareness of their actions.

Dissociative Psychosis: The apparently normal part(s) of the self are completely overwhelmed by emotional parts that are stuck in an active flashback. People with a lot of alters may end up in a cycle of flashbacks through different portions of their memory, and may spend most or all of the time in a flashback. These flashbacks can become severe enough to cause psychosis where the person can no longer tell people from the past and present apart. The person generally feels as though they are living in a fugue state. This is usually due to active trauma or a medication side effect causing rapid integration into a traumatic part of the memory. Dissociative psychoses can mimic manic episodes.

1. Yes! A good chunk of our sidesystems don’t 

2. HC-DID, and I said we have a brother hi counting numbers somewhere around the 400

3. Yes we have a lot of  accents, does not mean we’re fake, we just grew in a very diverse place.

4. Yes, I’m starting to stutter because of silence programming. Please please change the topic. It will only get worse 

Questions for other systems (traumagenics only)

🚨Warning: has a question mentioning MC (no details/abuse descriptions)🚨

Do you have any alters that don’t know they’re a part of a system?

If you’re polyfragmented (both C-DID and HC-DID, or just polyfrag if you prefer), do you have a high number of alters or are you medium to low on the alter count?

What’s one thing you wished people could know about your system specifically?

For systems with MC, what’s one thing that you wished people knew about programming/MC?

I’ll make a reblog answering these questions if I feel like it, if not I’ll just let y’all answer. Not that I wouldn’t do that anyways.

Being an autistic HC-DID system-or really any part/person that experienced torture and is autistic-is funny (in a bad way) because I’m so scared of engaging in my special interests. I’m a database for our torture and sigma+zeta programmed sidesystem which is basically I know surface level what happened but I never experienced it, I kind of just hold emotions and the idea.

Sometimes we were tortured for reading comic books and drawing. Art and writing are 2 of our then 3 then 4 and now 5 special interests. It was engaging in the “wrong ways”, as our group liked to call “sin”. Drawing was especially punished-they probably made something up about why it was worse than reading comics but it was probably because it left evidence we were at their houses.

Anyways, it’s especially painful for me to exist. Not only at I constantly anxious and panicked, I can’t do soothing activities that will help me because it’ll make things worse. But, if I don’t do the soothing activities, it also makes it worse. Stimming was also punished so I can’t do that either. I just wish we didn’t live like this.